Abstract

The architectural future of Moscow inspired the work of a number of Soviet filmmakers in the 1930s, among them Sergei Eisenstein, Vasilii Zhuravlev, and Aleksandr Medvedkin. In a number of films of that period, the future takes the form of a number of exceedingly complicated composite shots, close readings of which may tell us a great deal not only about the techniques used to construct such visions of the future, but also about cinema’s relationship to architectural history and architecture’s reciprocal interest in animation.

Anne Nesbet is Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She is working on a book on film and architecture in the Soviet 1920s and 1930s. Her previous publications include many articles on Soviet literature, film, and culture, as well as Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking (I. B. Tauris 2003). She also has written a number of novels for children, notably The Cabinet of Earths (HarperCollins 2012), A Box of Gargoyles (HarperCollins 2013), and The Wrinkled Crown (forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2015).